Moving day a success for UC Berkeley's Julia Morgan building

A jogger passes as workers move part of a building designed by Julia Morgan to its new home on the UC Berkeley campus.

A jogger passes as workers move part of a building designed by Julia Morgan to its new home on the UC Berkeley campus.

Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

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A jogger passes as workers move part of a building designed by Julia Morgan to its new home on the UC Berkeley campus.

A jogger passes as workers move part of a building designed by Julia Morgan to its new home on the UC Berkeley campus.

Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Moving day a success for UC Berkeley's Julia Morgan building

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At 7:30 Sunday morning, a big rig hauling what looked like an Elmwood living room took a hard left, then a hard right, and the only Julia Morgan-designed building on the UC Berkeley campus headed for the hills.

Called Girton Hall, the redwood structure is a 103-year-old city landmark also listed on state and national registers. So it was slow going to get it off campus and up Strawberry Canyon to its destination - the UC Botanical Garden.

Staff and friends of the garden stood at the entrance on Centennial Drive and cheered the arrival of the convoy. They've had a construction site there waiting 15 years for a social hall to hold garden club meetings and wedding receptions. Now here came one up the hill, in the name of one of Berkeley's most famous architects.

It will be open to the public and is expected to be available for booking by summer.

"It's overwhelmed my life for the last year," said Paul Licht, director of the Botanical Garden, as he excitedly watched the big rig come up the narrow canyon, its load seemingly scraping the curbs on both sides and the oak canopy overhead. "We have over 100 weddings a year here in the garden, and that will be a great place to get married."

Though Morgan assisted campus architect John Galen Howard with the master plan, Girton Hall is the only building to be designed specifically for the campus by Morgan.

'A sense of warmth'

Built of old-growth redwood, it features a huge brick fireplace, vaulted 18-foot ceiling and benches characteristic of the Morgan style. Originally named Senior Women's Hall, the one-story structure was completed in 1911 as a social hall for female students on what is now Gayley Road.

In the 1920s, Memorial Stadium rose up to the south of Girton and Bowles Hall, the castle-like men's dormitory, to the east. To make way for Gayley, which links Hearst and Piedmont avenues, the Women's Hall was moved downhill and to the west of the new roadway in the early 1940s.

It was later renamed Girton, which had been its nickname owing to a women's college at the University of Cambridge.

Once women's centers went out of fashion, Girton became a day care center conveniently situated next to Cowell Hospital. Then Cowell was replaced by the Walter A. Haas School of Business, and now Haas is expanding and needs the Girton site for a classroom wing. So the day care center was relocated last summer, and the building was made ready to move for a second time.

Building cut into 4 pieces

Though it is a landmark and must be protected, there is nothing in the registry saying it cannot be relocated, especially because it had already moved once. A search covered the campus two years ago, but it took a while to get the building all the way up into the canyon.

"It puts it back into the natural California setting that it was intended for, and it will return it to the social use it was intended for," Licht said.

To get the building up the winding road and down the narrow driveway to its resting place, it was cut into four pieces representing two small anterooms and a main hall sliced in half lengthwise. Each piece required a separate move and road closure of Centennial Drive, the main connector between the upper campus and Grizzly Peak Boulevard.

It took two weekends to get the job done, and, to ensure minimal disruption, the move started in the predawn darkness between the back of the business school and the front of the optometry school. The last big section, 480 square feet weighing 14,000 pounds, sat on its floor joists on the bed of the truck. It was crosscut so you could see the interior detail of redwood paneling and benches and the exit sign over the door.

"It's all wood and the brick fireplace, and this is one of the challenges of moving it," Leffler said. "When you move a building, normally you cover your scars with sheetrock and paint. Not this one. What you see inside is the beautiful old redwood. There's nothing like it."

Erik Andersen, a structural engineer on the job, stood there at first light, admiring the bones.

"A lot of people think these really old wood-frame houses are in danger in a big earthquake," he said, "but they're remarkably strong, even after 100 years."

Delicate maneuver

Overhearing it, Matt Trost, who drove it up the hill in a pull rig with a crane on it, joined in. "This house is earthquake-proof enough to go down the road at 30 miles an hour."

It was his third run, and he had it down. "Even my wife is not stressed now," he said confidently before jumping into the cab.

Once there was light out, the convoy rolled, up Piedmont to Stadium Rimway, around the back of the stadium and up Centennial past Witter Rugby Field. A 1.5-mile trip that normally takes five minutes was stretched into a half hour, or it seemed that way to the motorists waiting.

At the entrance to the garden, the truck had to make a delicate jackknife maneuver to back it into the driveway. A tree at the entrance lost a branch in the process. Also lost was a temporary garden planted in Mexican varietals.

The building site is at the front of the 34-acre property, near the roadway so it won't "interfere with the tranquillity of the garden," Licht said.

The final piece had been stashed overnight in the center of Maxwell Family Field, next to the stadium, and was brought up and in place by noon.

The four sections will now be joined back together in its blueprint - a large rectangle with a smaller square at both ends, one a sun porch and the other a kitchen/bathroom. From the main hall, double doors will open onto the original redwood deck, which has been in storage since the first relocation, its boards stacked and waiting to be rebuilt.

Earning investment back

The entire job is expected to cost the university $1.3 million, according to James Griffin, the general contractor.

But it will begin earning that investment back as soon as it starts booking weddings. First it needs a name. Girton Hall will no longer do, and neither will Senior Women's Hall.

"There is a lot of sentiment to call it just Julia Morgan," Licht said. "That's the name that people know."